


this hell so many times

by EclipseWing



Category: Dark Angel, Supernatural
Genre: Dark, Dean is Ben, Gen, Hell, Kind of a split identity, Murder, So I enjoyed the Dean and Alec being the same person trope, Torture, but not really, but wondered what it would be like if it was Ben and not Alec, serial killings, the only thing that needed to be changed would be he couldn't die, this was kind of twisted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 20:58:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3992629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EclipseWing/pseuds/EclipseWing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I can’t escape this hell so many times I’ve tried.”</p><p>Dean is Ben and Ben is Dean and he likes to think there's a difference between the two of them, but the truth is they're both murderers.</p><p>[or: Hendrickson has some interesting crimes to list, when Sam and Dean Winchester are captured in Folsom Prison Blues.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	this hell so many times

**“I can’t escape _this hell so many times_ I’ve tried.”**

He almost gets run over by the large black car. He skids to a halt in the bright headlights of the car and shies away like an animal, skittish and terrified, but at the same time rationally calm and calculating, like a predator.

The door slams open and there are footsteps. “God, kid… what are you doing out here? Where are your parents?”

He looks up at the man as he stalks towards him. He walks like he’s military and he flinches back, because he can’t get captured, not now, not again… He knows what they’ll do to him and not even the Blue Lady will be able to save him then.

“Woah, easy there…” the guy drops down to a crouch, putting him on his level. “My name’s John.” He’s got a thick beard and kind eyes behind the stern expression. “What’s yours?”

He doesn’t say anything. There is the sound of cars in the distance. John takes in the clothes and lack of shoes.

“Are you running, kid?” he asks.

It’s barely a nod, a slight jerk of the head as he shifts uneasily, wanting to run but bathing in the warmth of the stranger.

John reaches out a hand. “Come with me,” he says gently. “Come on, I’ll help you,” he insists.

All his training tells him to run and to flee but he cruelly squashes that aside. He can always leave later.

He takes the hand.

 

**And now suddenly he finds he has a new job, a new mission. This was his duty now.**

There’s a kid in the back of the car. “Dad?” the kid leans forwards, young and bright eyed. He can’t be older than seven or eight. “Who is he?” the kid whines.

“What’s your name?” John asks as he starts the engine. He casts a sideways glance at where he’s sitting on the passenger seat, shivering slightly. “Sammy, pass a blanket forwards.”

“It’s Sam,” the kid grumbles, doing as ordered.

“What’s your name soldier?” John asks again, but there’s something in his voice that turns it into an order.

“B’n,” he mutters, shivering as he takes the blanket. The words are muffled.

“Dean, huh?” John says, “Good name.”

He wants to correct the man, because his name isn’t _dean_ , he’s _ben_ but ben has a unit, has a designation, has a barcode tattoo on the back of his neck and he doesn’t want to be ben anymore. He’d been ben, prayed for help from someone who wasn’t listening and he couldn’t be ben without his unit anyway.

He liked the sound of Dean. Dean was a better person to be than ben anyway.

They pull up to the motel without saying much. John gets them a room and checks the room over, leaving salt lying around in front of the windows. “Dean, I’m going out for a bit to sort out some money and stuff. When I get back we’ll talk.”

He’d been planning to split, to leave and find somewhere else. It’s what he’s been trained to do.

The next words kill that. “Stay here and watch out for Sammy, alright soldier?”

And suddenly he has a new mission. It’s his duty to watch out for Sammy, and he realises he’s already accepted that task.

He’s a soldier after all, and good soldiers do what they’re told.

 

**Eventually though, the levee breaks and it all comes crashing out.**

He doesn’t talk about what happened for the first month. John just accepts him as a kid who is running from something bad.

He doesn’t talk when John takes him target shooting and he hits everyone with a bull’s-eye without being instructed.

He doesn’t talk when John tells him about the monsters hiding in the dark. About how his wife died and there’s something after Sam. He shows him a picture of the blonde woman and the small baby. Mary looks a bit like how he imagined the Blue Lady to look, except she was real, and beautiful and dead. (He wonders if she would have answered his prayers).

He doesn’t talk when John gets stopped by a military gang and is shown his picture. John lies and moves on but asks him about it. He’s too busy hiding and shivering with fear to answer.

He doesn’t talk when the shivers turn into shakes, and a frantic John contacts a doctor to find out what’s wrong. He’s too busy seizing and wondering if he’s going to die like Jack, and John’s going to leave him to be cut open and killed…

He still doesn’t talk when they steal the meds and scarper away from the manticore people looking for him and the hospital complaining about John Winchester’s insurance. John shrugs it off as ‘no problem’ and the seizing stops with the tryptophan and milk and serotonin supplements. He’ll try to avoid it in the future.

He doesn’t talk when Sammy asks about his barcode. He laughs it off, calls the kid ‘Sammy’ but Sam doesn’t mind when he hears it, and it makes him feels weird, because Sam won’t let John call him that. He’s different though. Like a friend.

Like a brother.

And it's all strangely perfect for the first time in his life.

Then he wakes up screaming and sobbing.

It’s Sammy who is there first to comfort him, to press his smaller body to his own, using him as a pillow, as if he was the source of comfort and not the other way around. Then John gets there and starts asking the questions and he starts answering them, because John’s the boss, he’s just the solider.

And it all comes crashing down. Manticore and his transgenic status and his barcode and his unit and the escape and the drills and the training and the deaths and the fear and ‘nomalies in the basement and the blue lady and ben and max and zack and he keeps talking. He realises somewhere between explaining how eva got shot and who lydecker was that he liked talking. He liked being able to hear the sound of his own voice.

It reminded him he was alive. That he was safe. And that he wasn’t back there anymore.

Sammy drifts asleep during the tale, too young to fully understand. John listens, and nods and wraps one arm around his shoulders until eventually he falls asleep on the older man’s shoulders, safe in his embrace.

And that’s when he realises that he’s no longer ben. He’s Dean now, and he’s got a family who need him.

And that’s the best feeling in the world.

 

**If there’s one thing he should know by now it’s this. Everyone leaves him in the end.**

“If you walk out that door don’t you ever come back.”

And with that Sammy walks out that door and just like that Dean’s alone. Again.

And with that he and John begin to drift apart. He’s not related to the man by blood, and with an overwhelming need to find the demon (or for the lack of that, save people from monsters) there is nothing keeping them together now that Sam is gone.

He wakes one morning and John isn’t there. He’s taken the truck and there’s a note on the table. There’s a hunt in Florida. Another in Oregon. So they split.

‘Look after yourself solider’. Dean considers what he is to John. He’s never quite been the son, but he’s always managed the soldier. Yet somehow John became Dad and he became the obedient older son, and Sam’s older brother. He’d become Dean Winchester; right up until the moment those that made him Dean Winchester were stripped away, leaving just the soldier behind.

He was made to be the soldier.

And now with nobody to turn to, he goes back to being the solider. It’s like pulling on an old pair of boots, and they’re still well-worn and easy to wear, even after all this time.

He kills the witch without a hold-up.

But for the first time in a long time, he finds himself gazing at her teeth. (He’ll always hate witches after that day, for knocking him off the path).

That’s how it starts. Because Sam left him and Dad left him but she’s still there. She has to be.

He knows it’s all in his head, which is why he tries to make the first few deaths worth it. An abusive father. A back alley cat burglar. A guy spying on young kids at a school.

It doesn’t last. He spots the golden chain of the cross hanging on a woman’s neck and he’s enraptured like a cat with a canary.

That’s when he starts branding them. That’s when the kills start becoming almost ritualistic. They’re like a hunt to him, but there’s something more thrilling about hunting something that can’t hunt back.

He’s offering up sacrifices to the Lady. But he’s also offering up a beacon. Because Sam left him and Dad left him and he knows he has other family somewhere… and soon… one of them will notice the barcodes.

He’s already at the bottom of the hill when he looks up and wonders how far he’s fallen, but by then it’s like a drug, and he doesn’t even try to stop.

 

**A punch instead of a kick might have saved his life, but the past can’t always be forgotten.**

He finds Max in Seattle.

She calls him Ben and he wonders when he stopped being dean and started being Ben again. She snarls at him like a hissing cat and handcuffs him up to the top of the highest place in the city. She interrupts his hunt but he continues it anyway, Max pounding on the locked door.

They fight in the woods and they’re evenly matched, right up until Ben realises he’s dean as well. He knows he’s been wrong, killing these people, and he just needed someone to make him see.

He needed someone to make him dean again.

And somehow Maxie… for all her reminders of home, can see right through to dean.

He lashes out with a punch… a very dean move and she catches and twists and he hears the bone break as he stumbles away from her. The fight lulls and that’s when they hear the helicopter and trucks.

His breathing speeds up, because they’ve never been close to catching him since he’s been dean, but Ben… he left a trail that they followed here.

“Come on,” she whispers to him, and he takes her hand and they run.

He pays for it later, when she handcuffs him up in her ordinary’s apartment. He’s too tired to protest as he slumps down, eyes to the floor. He can hear Max’s argument with her boyfriend loud and clear, as the guy tries to persuade her to kill him.

“You should,” he whispers, and he knows she hears him because she stops talking. “You should kill me.” He takes a shuddering breath. “I’m a monster.” Nothing better than the things he hunts.

“No…” she steps through the doorway to him. Her boyfriend hovers behind her. “You’re not. Ben… this isn’t you. This is what they made you and you’re better than this.”

Dean looks up to her, laughing. The sound makes the ordinary flinch. “You know that’s not true, Maxie,” he tells her, “You’re not gonna’ let me go. Not after all those people that I killed.” He tilts his head, considering, “It would be better to kill me. Kind of like… putting down a sick dog?” he offers.

He wonders if a part of him wants to die, and from the look in her eyes she wonders that too. “No,” she refuses. “I’m not killing you and I’m not handing you back to Manticore.”

He unconsciously tugs at his bonds sending jolts of pain through the broken limb because he hadn’t even realised Manticore was an option, but judging from Cale’s expression it obviously is.

He’s up there a week.

His phone rings on the fifth day. Max answers it and frowns at him. “Dean?” she asks, unfamiliar with the name. He hears Sam’s confused voice on the other end.

“Sammy?” he stares at the phone like a lifeline and slowly Max crouches next to him, the phone outstretched. “Sam?”

“Oh thank god, bro, I’d thought I’d got the wrong number or you’d changed phones _again,_ ” he hears Sam’s relieved voice.

“Nice to hear from you too, Sam,” he says, the hurt evident in his tone.

“Dean.” There is a pause and Max gives him a strange look. “Look, my thing was with Dad, okay? I’m walking away from the life, not walking away from you.”

“Really? Because it sure seemed that way when you walked out that door,” And his voice cracks as he says it. He’s sulking, he realises, and he hurriedly moves on. “How’s college?” he asks, brightly. “Nice chicks in California?”

“Oh my God, _Dean_!” Sam sounds embarrassed, but still worried. “Listen, dude… are you sure you’re okay?”

He grins but its weak and slips off his face as he looks at Max. “Great,” he says with false cheer. “I’m…”

“If you say ‘fine’ I’m going to ask that Max girl to punch you.” Sam interrupts. “Dean… you do realise when I left… I wasn’t leaving _you_!” he accentuated the last part and Dean actually flinches at that. “You actually thought that, didn’t you?” Everyone left him in the end and he didn’t see why Sam should make a difference to that fact…

“Look, Sam, I’m not talking about this…”

“Just… you’ll always be my big brother. Got it?” And Dean blinks away water from his eyes, avoiding the look of pity Max has on her face.

“Stop it with the chick flicks, bitch. Now go out. Loosen up and have a little fun, okay Sammy?”

“It’s Sam. Whatever jerk. So much for seeing if you were okay. Don’t let a werewolf eat you,” and the phone goes dead.

There’s a strange smile tugging at his lips as Max lowers the phone.

“Why?” she asks, simply. “You… you got a family. People to care about you. And then you just…”

“I’m fucked up Max,” he looks at her, and it’s all Ben talking to her. “I’m screwed in the head… what they did to us… I had nothing to hold onto except her and she was going to leave just like…” he stops, and looks away, and knows he needs to stop talking. He always talks too much, to make up for all the times when he couldn’t.

He talks about everything except the important stuff. And she sits there and listens as he babbles on about Sammy and the car and all the crappy motels and he wonders if she sees hints of Ben still, or if what she’s seeing is just Dean.

“I’m sorry, Maxie,” he tells her later. “I… It wasn’t my intention to start… I just… there was nobody there. Nothing to do. The hunts… it made me feel…” he can’t explain it to her, he sees that. She’s grown tame, here in her city. She doesn’t… can’t understand about Sam and hunting and how he had a purpose in life right up until it walked out of that door and left him stranded, high and dry and floating around without anything.

“I know you don’t believe me...” he says instead. “But I am sorry.”

He dislocates his thumb the next day and leaves. This is Max’s territory, and he doesn’t want to impose. He leaves a note, an apology, a promise, and he finds the car where he left it, finds his phone with another hunt location from Dad and with a grim grin, he sets off.

He’ll make his own freakin’ mission.

Max doesn’t hear of anymore murders.

But neither does she hear from Ben, and she’ll never admit it but she’s still kind of worried about him. (Logan couldn’t care less).

 

**He hears about the transgenics in Seattle only when a smirking man called Ames White drags him into a warehouse and calls him 494.**

“Where’s 452?” the man demands, throwing him roughly to the ground.

“Max?” he blinks, as the guy drags him up with transgenic strength. “I don’t know?” he half-shouts. “Her territory’s in Seattle. I don’t know where!”

“Territory,” the guy drops him on the floor, “You really are animals. I should have killed you last time we met, 494.”

Dean blinks. A smile tugs at his lips.

“What can you tell me about your other little friends?” White demands. “Start talking before I get tired of you.”

He starts laughing.

“What’s the matter, 494?” White sneers, “Scared 452 isn’t going to get her ass up to rescue you? You see, you’re bait.”

He’s still laughing and the man reels backwards.

“Shut up!” White kicks him, but he still laughs.

“My designation…” he drawls, relaxed and smirking, "is 493,” And he sees the moment White gets it, when he drags back the collar of his jacket to examine his barcode and curses.

He’s still laughing when they throw him into a cell and leave him there because this is the most entertaining thing that’s happened for a while.

“You’re one of the original escapees,” White confronts him after three days of no food or water.

“What do want? A prize?” he asks, sneering.

“Where are your friends?” White asks. “The ones that escaped with you?”

Dean takes the words like a knife. “I don’t know,” he grits his teeth. “They never contacted me. I never found them. I wasn’t welcome after…” he stopped talking, because he’s run into Jondy once, and she’s told him about the number Zack had set up. She’s told him how their unit leader knew where they all were and held them together.

All, except apparently him and Max. The two outcasts of the group. The fragile insane dreamer and the emotional little girl.

White is flicking through his files. “You’re the one that went on a killing spree.” He looks disgusted. “Snapped necks, teeth pulled out, and arm broken behind the back… displayed on a rock to die…”

He’s in there another four days before Max rescues him. “You’re a fool, Alec,” she snaps at him, irritated and annoyed.

He pulls up short from the alley she is tugging him down. “Alec?” he asks.

She stops, frowning. There’s a figure at the end of the alleyway.

“Max? Oh thank god, Mole said you went off to the Familiar’s base after getting back from the scientist virus dude. Max?”

Dean shakes his head, stepping back. He doesn’t want to do this… he can’t do this. “I’m sorry, Maxie,” he whispers, and he sees his twin pause at the other side of Max.

“Ben?” she breathes, eyes wide.

“493…” his little brother stares at him.

“I can’t…” he’s still backing away. “I’ve got to go…”

He flees, leaving Max and Alec standing there staring after him.

 

**He wishes things could be different. He wishes things were the other way around and it was Alec who had escaped… because his younger brother would have coped much better than he.**

He doesn’t leave the city. Alec finds him perched on the Space Needle, fingers drumming Metallica on the steelwork.

“So you’re the infamous Ben huh?” he drops down beside him. “I don’t know whether to be sad or glad to finally meet you.”

“You shouldn’t want to meet me,” Dean tells him, “Not after what you must have gone through back at Manticore because of me.”

Alec tilts his head considering. “Okay, fair point. But all the twins are different. I met Max’s twin,” the guy whistled. “Actually now I think about it, they are pretty similar, because boy was she a spitfire.”

“She’s your sister,” Ben (Dean) tells him, frowning.

Alec shrugs. “That was your unit, bro. The rest of us… they kept us split up after you guys escaped.”

They sit there in silence for a moment.

“I should blame you,” Alec says after a while. “I got almost a year in psy-ops because of you. Two years if you count your escape in 09. But now I actually meet you… I find I can’t.”

Dean can feel his twin (he can’t use the word clone somehow… it feels too hollow) staring at him, examining him.

“Somehow I think you almost got it worse off than me,” Alec shrugs, “Or maybe we are different.”

“I couldn’t cope,” the words come out of his mouth before he could stop them, “From the looks of things you can.”

Alec laughs, and it’s bitter and he recognises his own self-derisive laugh. “I didn’t do much better to be honest,” he admits. “I just had more training to fall back on. I screwed up this one mission when I fell in love. Then after I got out I made money selling drugs and cage fighting.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” Dean (Ben) leans back and stretches, “I make money through poker, pool hustling and credit card scams.”

Neither of them laughs, but they both have almost identical grins on their faces.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” Alec asks him eventually.

“Yes,” Dean doesn’t feel guilty. He even throws the offer out there. “You can come along if you want to, little brother.”

“Little,” Alec scoffs. “My designation is higher than yours.”

Dean shrugs, “I’m kind of used to being a big brother,” he tells him.

“Thanks for the offer, but Max kind of needs me here. Have you seen some of the messes she gets herself into?”

And as Alec runs over the rhetorical question and keeps talking, Dean takes a moment to examine how others must see him.

Sam’s right. He is kind of a jerk.

 

**After Dad doesn’t call in after the latest hunt Dean knows it’s finally time to go and fetch Sam. (He needs at least one family member tying him down, because otherwise he’ll drift away again and there will be no saving him).**

Ben was twelve in 2009 when he escaped. He is twenty six in 2023 when his dad goes missing.

John doesn’t call in after the latest hunt to see how he’s doing. The hoodoo in New Orleans is sorted, and hurricane debris avoided, and he doesn’t have another hunt. He considers phoning Bobby or Jim, but before he really knows it, he’s driving west.

Not towards Seattle, where Max and Alec set up TC for good, but towards Palo Alto, where Sam studies.

He’ll always come back to Sam in the end. **  
**

 

**It’s kind of ironic that John worries about Sam turning evil when it’s Dean he should be worried about.**

John doesn’t know about his time off the reservation in 2019. Dean wonders what the man would do if he knew.

Maybe he’d kill him, like he’s asked Dean to do to Sam, because Dean’s so far past saving now.

He wonders why John sacrificed himself for him. Then he thinks about Sam and realises that he’d do the same any day when it came to Sammy. Sam’s a better person than he is anyway.

Which ponders the question of why John threw this on him? Maybe he still has that delusion that Dean’s a soldier, an engineered superhuman who can do anything. It never made much difference to the hunts, or to the monsters they killed. The yellow-eyed bastard had tilted his head in surprise as he pulled apart John’s mind and found out about John’s not-son.

“But you… Dean… I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting you before. I’ve met your mother… oh wait… she’s not your mother is she? You’re not even his son. Just a poor orphaned kid that he picked up on the road?” And if there was anything found out about Manticore it wasn’t mentioned.

It’s kind of ironic, that John worries about Sam’s humanity and not his own.

But then again, Dean has Sam to cling onto whenever he feels himself slipping.

Now he just has to be that anchor for Sam as well. **  
**

 

**Then there is Hendrickson. And Henrickson _knows_.**

He thought he’d left his crimes behind, right up until they come knocking on his door. Or rather, Dean leant against the door as it was violently pulled open for him.

The chains are cold on his hands as he sits slumped over slightly. Sam sits in the same interview room as him, because after a day of neither of them speaking, it’s obvious they’ll get more out of them together than apart.

“So tell me,” Hendrickson stalks around them like a pissed of cat. Dean smiles at the irony of that. “Grave desecration. Theft and credit card fraud. Vandalism. The St Louis murders. Baltimore. Milwaukee. The Wandell case…”

Sam can’t stop himself from flinching and the fed smiles, knowing he’s got them there.

“So what was that, a little down time?” Hendrickson challenges them. “We can trace dozens of crimes across the states. Wherever you go, trouble follows.”

“Can we see our lawyer?” Sam’s teeth are gritted, wanting to defend them.

“She’ll be here soon,” Victor shrugs, uncaring. “Tell me, Sammy,” (Both brothers tense at the name) “Why aren’t you in college anymore?”

Sam clenches his fists and doesn’t answer.

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. Your little girlfriend _died_. House fire was it? How unfortunate.”

The way he says it has Sam tensing, because Hendrickson sounds like he believes it was anything but an accident.

And he keeps talking. “It seemed like you finally managed to get away from your father and brother. Got yourself into law school. Full ride. Now why would you throw that away?” he turns his gaze to Dean. “It must have hurt, when your brother left you like that?”

And Dean barely controls the flinch, the pain, because it had, it did, it still did, and he’d been lost but…

“So you figured if you killed the girlfriend, Sam would come running back to you. Nice plan.”

He hadn’t killed Jessica.

“Dean wouldn’t.” Sam shook it head. “It wasn’t Dean. Dean doesn’t kill people.”

“Doesn’t he?” Hendrickson laughs. “Like he didn’t torture your friend, Becky, when you got to close to leaving him again? Like he didn’t kill those other people back when you finally escaped to college?”

The slight frown in Sam’s face is seen before he can hide it.

“Didn’t tell you about those ones, did he?” Hendrickson grabs a file and throws it onto the table. Dean tries to swallow but he can’t, his throat is too dry, as the fed opens the brown folder, spreads out the photos of the bodies. “Lucky we still have this. Some government organisation tried to wipe them clean, but I kept copies.”

Dean stares past them, fixing his gaze on some dirty brown stain on the wall.

Sam leans forward to look, as Hendrickson explains. “For about two years from 2018 to 2020, bodies were found in a trail across the country, displayed with their arm broken behind them, necks snapped.” He grabs a piece of paper and lists them off, “two murders in Chicago. Four in Miami. Three in New York. Three in Seattle.”

Panic is choking Dean and he can see the people, feel the wet snap of their necks and…

“All their teeth were pulled out,” Hendrickson finishes, triumphantly, and Dean can feel Sam turn to look at him in horror, but there is one more part. “They had a barcode tattooed on the back of their necks.”

Sam is silently staring at him, accessing the information, but Dean can feel the silent horror. He says nothing.

Then: “You gave them your barcode?”

_(“Don’t you get it? You’re killing yourself over and over again!”)_

“His?” Hendrickson picks up on this, stalking around them until he can grab the back of Dean’s head, turning down the collar that is almost permanently turned up. At first glance there is nothing there, but then the agent rubs of the cheap foundation to reveal the black lines beneath. “Same design,” the fed checks with the photos, still scattered across the desk. “Proof of purchase or something?”

Dean shakes his head, knocking away the hand. “Shut up,” he feels sick, because he thought he had finally managed to leave this all behind. “It wasn’t what you think.”

Except it was, and this might be the only thing Hendrickson has gotten right.

Without Sam or Dad it had been his own hunt, task, duty, mission (discipline) (he was always such a good little soldier).

“Dean?” he looks up at Sam’s puppy dog eyes. “Tell me you didn’t do this.” His brother is pleading him, begging him… and he can’t lie.

“I’m a hunter Sam.” His voice is weak. “It’s what I was made to do. I… you weren’t there… I… I’m _made_ to kill…” How can he explain the need, the thrill of the hunt and the satisfaction when the body falls? He’s a predator, and it’s not just the feline DNA in him.

Hendrickson is glowing, because that was practically a confession right there. “Does this barcode scan?” he asks mockingly, pacing around to the front. “Did daddy do it to keep track of his little bastard?”

_“My designation is 331845739493.”_

He doesn’t realise he’s said it out loud but the pair are staring at him as if he’s mad (he probably is). “Dean,” Sam says, and he hates the understanding that he sees there, because Sam can’t understand, never will if he can manage it, because he’s always had to protect his little brother. “Dean,” Sam shakes his head hopelessly.

The name is so hollow. For so long to the man and the son who found him, he was Dean, he would be their Dean, except when they didn’t need him. And then he’s slipped back to being ben, and it was both a breath of fresh air and a curse right up until he finds peace in being Dean again.

Hendrickson leans down in front of Dean. “I know what you are,” he hisses, “Even if Sammy doesn’t.”

Dean shudders, eyes widening slightly.

Hendrickson leans back. “You’re a psychopath,” he spits. “And I’ll see to it that you get the death sentence.”

And Dean shouldn’t be relieved, but he is, because he’s still safe, still anonymous. Hendrickson doesn’t have a clue that he could snap the cuffs now, that he could snap the guys neck like he’s been trained to in less than three seconds. He swallows, trying to bury down ben and manticore and x5-493 even when he knows it’s impossible because it’s like trying to bury down your very soul…

“I’ll leave you two to it then,” Hendrickson smirks and Dean’s head snaps up, fixing him with a glare which is entirely animalistic, and the man hastens to leave with a quick, “Your lawyer will be along shortly.”

Sam was right. This was a stupid idea.

 

**And now the secret’s out and Sam has to deal with the consequences.**

**He remembers that Dean’s eyes bled too when facing Bloody Mary.**

“What the hell was that?” Sam hisses at him, standing in line to run through a metal detector.

“So Henrickson wasn’t part of the plan,” Dean shrugs.

“That wasn’t what I was talking about,” Sam snaps.

“What do you want me to say?” he lashes out, scared and he doesn’t know what. He doesn’t want Sam to judge him, Sam’s never judged him for his time at Manticore and he doesn’t want it to start now.

Sam’s brow furrows. “Dean…” he looks like he wants to say something. “I’m not gonna’ leave you,” he says instead.

He flinches, because that was what set the whole thing off in the first place. “Too late,” he whispers. “You left and I killed and what can I do to change that?”

“You can be my brother.”

“I’m not your brother.”

“Not by blood. But blood doesn’t make family.”

Dean shakes his head. “I’m a killer. I’m a soldier. I’m someone’s pet science project grown in a lab.”

“You’re Dean. You’re my big brother, and I don’t care.”

He knows he’s not been forgiven but somehow that’s all he needs to hear. **  
**

 

**The guards strip them of belongings. Including his tryptophan.**

He doesn’t start shaking until they get to the prison. They’re marched there and his limbs tremble as the inmates leer at him.

He could kill them with one quick movement.

They don’t know that.

He changes into an orange jumpsuit and whispers to Sammy, when the guards aren’t looking too closely. He shouldn’t be this adapted to life behind bars, but it’s familiar in a horrible way.

He tries to hide the shivering hands but Sam notices. Sam always notices things like that.

“Dean, where’s your tryptophan?” he asks.

“The guards t-took it,” he mutters, draining his glass of milk.

It doesn’t help.

“Tell them,” Sam hisses. “It’s medication that you need.”

Dean laughs. “What normal human needs serotonin supplements, Sammy?” the shakes have worked their way up his arms and he can’t hide it anymore as they stand up.

“Watch where you’re going!” a guy snaps at Sam as he walks past.

As always Dean jumps to defensive big brother. “He s-said he was sorry,” he growls.

“Are you talking to me?” the guy looks like it is Christmas. He’s itching to pick a fight and Dean (Ben) is twitchy. It’s not just the seizures starting, it’s the urge to hit back at something, to lash out and snap the neck like a fragile twig…

He squashes the urge down.

The guy frowns at him when he doesn’t speak, just stands there trembling. “What’s the matter with you?” He almost appears to smell his weakness.  Another man lumbers towards him when the tattooed guy smirks and punches Dean in the face.

He dodges without even thinking and in five seconds (less even) he’s got the guy pinned to the wall. His arm rests across the guy’s neck and his feet dangle from the floor. He’s close to crushing the windpipe when Sam’s there, pulling him away. His voice sounds like it’s piercing a thick haze.

“Dean! Dean! Easy man, calm down… just calm down.”

He drops the man, Lucas, and steps back, suddenly aware of how weak he feels, which for a transgenic who just pinned a heavier man to the wall is ironic.

His limbs are trembling and he meets Sam’s panicked gaze, seconds before the first seizure starts and he sinks to the ground, with his little brother’s cries echoing in his ears.

He wakes in a cell. For a moment he thinks he’s back at Manticore, except he’s still shaking and they haven’t dragged him away and cut him up yet.

He moans his limbs uncontrollable. “No,” he mutters, head rolling back, “No, please… Max… Alec… help…” he doesn’t know why he’s calling to his siblings, but he knows that whatever this is they’re not around to get him out.

“Well aren’t you in a sorry state?” Hendrickson grins from the doorway and it all comes crashing back.

He stares back, limbs shaking.

“What’s wrong with you?” he demands harshly.

“Why’re you h-h-here?” he mumbles, wishing his body would just kill him already. “S’not… n-n-n-ice to m-mock a guy when he’s d-down.”

“Your brother says you have a serotonin deficiency.” Hendrickson sneers, “That true?”

“T-t-tryptophan,” he gets out even as another violent seizure ranks through him. When he blinks his eyes open again Hendrickson is inside his cell and dropping a bottle next to him.

The man looks down on him. “Now I don’t like you. But I’m not the kind of person to sit here and watch a guy die. Even if he is as crazy as you are.”

He stalks off and Dean (Ben) lurches for the pills, dropping half of them but swallowing enough. His metabolism is fast… he’ll be back to normal soon enough… if he can just sleep this off…

He wonders, briefly, why Hendrickson decided he was worth saving.

Ben… Dean… whichever name he picks, it doesn't matter.

He doesn't believe he is worth saving.

 

**The crossroads demon doesn’t seem to recognise that his mutilated part animal soul is already hell bound when he makes that deal. Sam doesn’t realise this either.**

He thinks most of the demons don’t know. He wonders if he is human enough where it counts… just with the few alterations.

It doesn’t matter in the end. He was already hell bound for his time sacrificing believers of the Blue Lady… the Virgin Mary… he was already earmarked for that, and he wonders why the crossroads demon couldn’t sense it.

There’s a horrible finality about the year to live. He’s terrified… but at the same time he’s joyous and relieved.

He doesn’t know why.

He’s going to hell.

He’s going _back_ to hell.

It sounds almost like home.

Maybe it’s where he belongs.

 

**It takes Alistair thirty years to realise that he’s already broken.**

It shouldn’t really. The smell of blood and iron and sulphur is almost sweet in comparison to the metal and chemicals he remembers from his tortured childhood. And in comparison to Manticore, Hell is like summer camp.

“Why refuse boy?” the demon sneered, wrapped around him in smoke. “This is hell after all. You’ll break eventually.”

“This isn’t hell…” he spends most of the time in that denial, when he’s not repeating his designation (that just confuses them) “Manticore was worse…” he cuts off as with a scream Alistair starts up the torture again for another day.

They don’t let him off the rack. He escapes. The white-eye runs off when he hears about angels breaching hell (or some shit like that) and Ben tears the chains from his arms, flesh still hanging to the hooks and he runs. Or maybe falls… there’s not really much to go on.

He stalks amongst the others unafraid and nobody looks twice. He looks as if he belongs there, a bloodhound tracking something and he stops in front of the first soul who begs for God to help her.

“It’s okay,” he croons in her ear, slipping the chains off her. “It will be over soon…” he hushes her, and she falls quivering into his arms. That’s the moment his grip grows tight. He let her bury her head on his shoulder, as he reaches around, brushing away hair from the back of her neck. In his hand is a switchblade he found somewhere, and he flicks it open.

He holds her still while she screams, quickly and effectively marking the regular lines along the back of her neck. It’s not a tattoo… but it’s close enough.

“Now run…” he whispers in her ear as she flinches away, stumbling and weeping.

Her escape is more obvious than his was. There are wailing souls everywhere, but her desperate plight attracts the attention of hungering demons stalking the edge of the pit and they move in. Dean waits for her to get a bit further away before he moves, lips curled back.

“She’s mine,” he warns them and there must be some look in his eyes that encourage the demons to fall back. This was _his_ hunt. _His_ kill.

Not that she dies, but the arm still breaks and the teeth still bleed as he pulls them out. She doesn’t slip away either like the other ones, and he holds her sobbing, offering her comfort even as he ripped it apart.

That’s how Alistair finds him. The scornful demon looks like he wants to chide Ben for escaping, but at the same time looks relieved and proud of the wreck he made of the girl. She’s healing and he prepares to cut in the barcode once more.

“That’s going to get awfully repetitive,” Alistair prompts, “How about you let me show you something more inventive?”

Ben looks up to the demon. He shrugs, “There are plenty around,” he gestures to… well… whatever the hell scene around them is. “I’ve got plenty of time.” And he gets back to work.

“You look like you’ve done this before…” the white eye observes the quick, deft movements.

“I have.” He hums some music… something by Metallica under his breath. He steps back and watches as she runs again, just as eager, just as pitiful. The hunter in him stirs, and some other part of him, the feline… longs to pounce and sink his claws in, but he waits because it’s more fun that way.

“You said no when I offered you the knife.”

Hollow green eyes examine the demon. “I’m not a basement freak,” he snarls, and he knows he’s getting mixed up between Ben and Dean and Hell and Manticore and demons and transgenics… but Hell’s enough of a mess anyway that the white eye doesn’t seem to care. “I’m a soldier,” he adds, “I’m made to hunt and kill, not torture and mock.”

Alistair hums. “I don’t see the difference.”

Ben leaves him there, jogging away as he tracks down his prey in the fire ice pit. He feels like he’s back in those woods… that first hunt…

Some part of him would never forget that first taste of blood.

It’s why he enjoyed being a hunter so much, after all.

(When Castiel pulls him out of Hell he thinks he left some part of himself behind, but then he wakes to screams and the taste of blood and he realises that this is who he is now, Ben and Dean with no boundaries (those were broken down long, long ago).)


End file.
